Hobbies
by Agar
Summary: Alucard has picked up some strange hobbies in the past 500 years. A week long “slice of life” in the Hellsing household.
1. Monday: Knitting

_**"**__**Hobbies"**_

_**by Agar**_

Rating: PG for some mild language.

Summary: Alucard has picked up some strange hobbies in the past 500 years. A week long "slice of life" in the Hellsing household.

Disclaimer: Hellsing is the creation of Kouta Hirano and belongs to various publishers and producers who are not me. I am not making any money from this.

Author's Notes: This fic was inspired by an oekaki called "Alucard-The hobby knits" by meso-moq at DeviantArt. Her artwork is rough, but quite beautiful and often humorous. Please go take the time to look her up.

* * *

**Monday - Knitting**

Every step Integra took down the basement stairs echoed with her anger. She's been calling that damned vampire for _ten minutes_ and he still hadn't bothered to answer.

If the mansion had been under attack, they could already be a smoking pit in the English countryside. Luckily, it wasn't anything that dire, or even very important, but it was the principle of the matter. She was the master and Alucard the slave; he came to her, not the other way around. Yet here she was dragging herself away from some very important research because her servant was ignoring her. If there was one thing Integra hated more than undead freaks, it was being ignored. It was deeming. What good was being a bloody knight if no one gave her the respect her position deserved?

She didn't bother knocking. It may have been Alucard's room, but it was her damn house and she'd go where she pleased. The door opened so forcefully it knocked into the stone wall with a loud crack.

"Alucard! I've been summoning you for fifteen minutes!" A slight exaggeration, but who was counting? "Why have you not responded?!"

Fully prepared to drag him upstairs by the collar, she crossed the room, pistol in hand, but froze in her tracks. From the door, she hadn't seen the tangled mass of string in his lap, or the two long needles in his hands. He was looping the string around them in a rhythm she vaguely recalled from her primary school Home Economics class, the one she'd failed.

The No-Life King looked up from where he was lounging in his throne. "Hm? Master, I must have been absorbed in my work. Forgive me."

Though her eyes could plainly read the situation, her brain was in denial. It seemed so..._domestic_; completely out of character for a creature whose primary joy in life came from devouring people in the most violent ways possible. She could no more have stopped the words coming out of her mouth than a train with her bare hands. "...What exactly are you _doing_?"

"Knitting," he replied, with the same blasé tone of voice one might use when discussing the weather. As if he wasn't a 500 year old, gun-toting, shapeshifting Nosferatu passing the time with a craft better suited for little old ladies.

"You're not very good."

He shrugged, not bothered by the criticism. "I haven't been doing it long. So far I can only make rectangular things." He held up the foot long knit square dangling over his knee. It's edges were uneven, and there was a small hole in the middle big enough to put his finger through. "Would you like a scarf?"

Wondering if she'd stumbled into some surreal alternate dimension, she decided it couldn't hurt to say yes. "...Sure."

* * *

A/N: Well, what do you think? Hopefully it's not too crack-ish. There will be 6 more installment, each for a different day of the week and featuring strange new hobbies for Alucard to scare Integra with. See you then...


	2. Tuesday: Vampire Remix

_**"**__**Hobbies"**_

_**by Agar**_

Rating: PG for some mild language.

Summary: Alucard has picked up some strange hobbies in the past 500 years. A week long "slice of life" in the Hellsing household.

Disclaimer: Hellsing is the creation of Kouta Hirano and belongs to various publishers and producers who are not me. I am not making any money from this.

Author's Notes: This fic was inspired by an oekaki called "Alucard-The hobby knits" by meso-moq at DeviantArt. Her artwork is rough, but quite beautiful and often humorous. Please go take the time to look her up.

* * *

**Tuesday – Vampire Remix**

That morning when Walter brought her breakfast he had a rather lumpy navy blue scarf around his neck. She raised an eyebrow.

"Good morning, Sir Integra," he said setting down her tray on her nightstand.

"Walter, you have a dead Muppet around your neck."

"Oh, this?" He fingered the fringe as if he'd forget the yarn atrocity was there. "Alucard said it was his first attempt. I offered to take it and whatever others he deems inadequate. I believe he wants more practice before making yours and Miss Victoria's."

"What are you going to do with the rest of those...," she winced, "...things?"

There was a definite smirk on his face when he poured the cream in her tea. "A new winter fashion trend is about to begin in the men's barracks."

The aforementioned barracks had been plagued with insulation problems as long as Integra could remember. Honestly, the entire heating unit needed to be replaced, but something of that size was bloody expensive, especially when every spare dollar went to outfitting her soldiers with silver bullets.

Killing two bird with one stone. Trust Walter to have a solution for everything. Whatever she paid him it wasn't enough. Too bad there wasn't more in the budget, but she made a mental note to bump up his Christmas bonus. "Maybe they'll stop complaining about the old heater then." She bit into her toast with satisfaction.

The day passed slowly, filing backlogged mission reports and signing off on request forms. It was more of the usual: new uniforms, more medical supplies, replacements parts for the transports, and ton after ton of ammunition. At the top of the stack was Walter's check list, a folder containing requests, receipts, and bills for a mind-boggling array of cleaning products, groceries, and the raw materials needed for his latest breakthrough in anti-freak technology. Reading it was one of her few forms of entertainment. So far his most memorable request was the depleted uranium, and finding a legal source to obtain _that_ from had been interesting to say the least.

This week's list was free of any radioactive materials, to her disappointment. The most interesting receipt was an online order from an Italian botanical nursery, but she supposed Walter was entitled to landscape as he saw fit since he took care of it. If he wanted to waste his time babying tropical trees during a English winter then she wished him luck.

Her work continued uninterrupted save for meals and a smoke break out on the balcony. The brisk air did much to clear her head and invigorate her for the coming night. As a Hellsing, work did not end when the day did. The nature of the organization made her and all her soldiers night owls.

The temperature dropped as evening neared and she reclaimed her seat at her desk to wait for her servant. The sun set, and minutes later a shadow dangled from her ceiling.

"Good evening, my Master. What are your orders?" The shadow melted and reformed beside her.

She thrust a plastic bag in his direction. Curious, he dumped it onto her desk and out rolled 3 balls of dark maroon yarn.

"I would like a red scarf."

He grinned. "Blue would better bring out your eyes, my Master."

"_Red_. And it had better not look like that misshapen rug Walter has choking him," she scowled.

"Of course."

* * *

There was no mission tonight, as it happened. Their latest lead on the location of a rumored vampire coven had proven to be false, leaving the soldiers at loose ends for the night. For them it was a much deserved break, but it left Integra feeling anxious and useless. She could only imagine how Alucard and Seras felt, confined to the mansion grounds as they were. With no better recourse, for the second night in a row she made the long decent to the basement to seek out the company of her vampires.

She heard them long before she saw them. After wheedling Walter for something to make her cell more 'homey,' Seras was now the proud owner of CD player, but upon hearing in Avril Lavigne his dungeon Alucard had demanded one of his own and several CDs. This, unfortunately, had developed into an ongoing battle of the bands: Seras' boy bands, light rock, and bubblegum pop, versus Alucard's apocalyptic German operas and 70s rock'n'roll. No matter how quietly the music was played, their vampire hearing could always detect it, so the minute Seras' stereo would start playing Alucard would turn up his own music to drown it out. The two would progressively up the volume until Alucard snapped or Seras tattled to Integra. Luckily that had only happened once, and her threat of taking the stereos away had been enough to never involve her again.

Why Walter didn't just buy the idiots some headphones Integra had no idea.

This time a haunting, androgynous voice twisted through the corridors. One minute it was a low purr, then it would build into a clear, soul wrenching high note that lingered and echoed. From two flights of stairs up, the effect was quite eerie. The words were unintelligible, and through the tune was vaguely familiar Integra couldn't put her finger on it.

While passing Seras's room, she noticed the Draculina hadn't bothered to play her own music. Likely she'd already given up fighting her master on the issue.

Standing outside Alucard's reinforced steel door, she raised her hand to knock only to freeze when a particular lyric drifted past. She could have groaned when she recognized it. When had he managed to see _that_ movie?

"Really Alucard, _Love Song for a Vampire_? Even I was insulted by that movie," she muttered as the door swung open seemingly of it's own volition.

"It makes me feel sentimental," came her servant's amused voice from where he lounged on his throne. On the table next to him was a chianti bottle with a lit candle in it's neck, a stack of CDs, and the aforementioned stereo. With no electricity in his room, it was powered by a series of extension cords that snaked their way across the floor, up the wall, and through the ventilation system where they emerged two stories up to plug into an outlet in the kitchen. Woe betide the maid that unplugged it to use the blender.

She rolled her eyes at his reply and took a seat perched on the edge of his coffin. Had anyone else dared to do such a thing he would have torn them limb from limb, but with Integra he had no choice but to grudgingly tolerate it. As one of the few things that got under his skin, Integra made a point to do it as often as possible: petty revenge for all the times he'd driven up the wall with frustration. "There's no mission tonight. The men on duty seem to think that means they can 'take it easy,'" she scoffed. "I'd like you to correct that."

His coffin's violation momentarily forgotten, he grinned like a wolf scenting prey. "Oh?"

"They're sloppy and undisciplined. We've been caught off guard before, and I _won't_ allow it to happen again," she hissed. Clearly the invasion by the Valentine Brothers still weighed heavily on her shoulders, and she had every intention on taking it out on whoever was stupid enough to not pass muster.

"Then what are my orders, my Master?"

A nasty smirk twisted her lips. "Catch them with their pants down. Happy hunting, Alucard."

* * *

A/N: Hopefully Integra did not mean that last bit literally, or Alucard is going to scare the piss out of some Wild Geese.

First off, a HUGE thank you to everyone who favorited me, this story, or put it on their alerts! I am floored by the response I've gotten just for chapter 1. Looking at the story traffic, I got hits from over 40 different countries, including Guam, Qatar, South Africa, Malaysia, and Romania. O.O?! Hobbies is such a silly, pointless fic, I would never have imagine how much people like it. I guess deep down we all want to see Alucard act like a freak and discover mall goths or blow up the microwave (a few of my personal favorites ^_^).

Okay, so it's not exactly a hobby, but I thought Alucard listening to modern music would be funny. _Love Song For a Vampire _is an Annie Lennox song that was played during the end credits of the '92 movie _Bram Stoker's Dracula_. If you haven't seen it, the basic idea is that Mina is the reincarnation of Vlad's wife, Elisabeta, who killed herself when she thought Vlad died fighting the Turks. A very good vampire romance movie, but very sad. Integra finds it insulting because she doesn't like how they portrayed Abraham (but who cares about that, Gary Oldman is _god_ in that movie).


	3. Wednesday: Origami

"_**Hobbies"**_

_**by Agar**_

Rating: PG for some mild language.

Summary: Alucard has picked up some strange hobbies in the past 500 years. A week long "slice of life" in the Hellsing household.

Disclaimer: Hellsing is the creation of Kouta Hirano and belongs to various publishers and producers who are not me. I am not making any money from this.

Author's Notes: This fic was inspired by an oekaki called "Alucard-The hobby knits" by meso-moq at DeviantArt. Her artwork is rough, but quite beautiful and often humorous. Please go take the time to look her up.

* * *

**Wednesday - Origami**

Wednesday night Integra decided to take dinner in the dining room instead of her office. As such, fate contrived to make her privy to the strange behavior of two of Hellsing's strangest residents.

Had she not decided to eat downstairs, she wouldn't have taken the hall between the kitchen and common rooms; had she been a minute earlier or later, she would never had run into Walter ferrying empty bags of blood. Upon seeing what looked like a vampire's dirty dishes, she retraced Walter's steps to investigate what havoc Alucard had managed to cause this time.

Surprisingly, she found herself in a room she seldom had the time to use: the living room.

Normally around this time of night the three large couches were occupied by off duty soldiers watching her big screen TV, but the vampires' presence (read: Alucard) seemed to have scared them off temporarily; not surprising after Baskerville tore through the their ranks like a tornado with teeth last night. Only the tops of their heads were visible over the back of the couch, huddled close and speaking in low voices as they conspired together. Alucard's laugh was a throaty rumble, like the purr of a large cat, and Seras' gossipy twitter answered back.

Curious and a little worried, because anything that amused Alucard typically spelt a headache for her, she walked around the couch and coughed to announce her presence. Not that you could sneak up on a vampire, but Seras' was a little scatterbrained sometimes.

Judging from the way the blonde vampire jumped, she'd been too distracted to pay attention to her enhanced senses. "Good morning, Sir," she said brightly.

Integra almost smirked, but she refrained for Seras' sake. The poor girl still hadn't gotten used to being nocturnal."Good evening, Seras, Alucard."

The pair sat cross-legged on the floor hunched over the coffee table. Between them was a book held open with coasters and stacks of colorful paper cut into precise squares. Scissors, glue, and other craft supplies were piled at Seras's elbow, inches away from being knocked over. Scattered over the table and spilling over onto the floor like 3-D polka dots were curiously shaped bits of crumpled paper. There was a distinct lack of knitting needles and yarn.

"I thought you were knitting?"

"I am, just not right this minute," Alucard shot back without looking up from...whatever it was he was doing exactly.

"And right now you're...?"

"Making origami!" Seras answered.

"What?" She furrowed her brow at the foreign word.

"The art of folding paper. The Japanese invented it." Seras held up a green triangle. "See? It's a frog." She wiggled it and the googly-eyes she'd pasted on it's head looked at Integra cross-eyed.

"And what are those supposed to be?" She pointed to the pile that had taken over Alucard's side of the coffee table.

Alucard grinned wickedly, the tip of a fang peeking out over his lip. "Bats."

She should have known. Bending down, she picked one up and raised an eyebrow at Alucard humorously. "I wasn't aware that bats came in such...an array of colors," she said tactfully.

Alucard glared at the pink bat in her hand. "We ran out of black."

Seras bit the inside of her check to smother her laugher and took the bat from Integra. In her other hand she held up one of the black ones. "Look Master, it's us!" Then in a false baritone, she "I'm Alucard and I'm a big meanie! My fledgeling won't drink her blood so I make fun of her all the time, but really I'm just jealous that she has a bigger gun than I do!"

Alucard snatched the bat from her hand. "What are you, five? And I'm not jealous of that substitute penis you and Walter call a gun. The Casull is not compensation, it's _advertisement_."

Seras grimaced. "Eww, TMI Master."

"And on that note I'll be leaving before the conversation degenerates even further," Integra interjected with a sour look on her face as she turned smartly on her heel like a drill sergeant."I'll be in my study," she said stiffly. _Banging my head into the wall to erase that from my memory. Ugh._

Integra's long strides carried her around the corner before she could hear Alucard's no doubt inappropriate rebuttal. There were times when it felt like her and Walter were the only adults in the house. The only responsible ones anyway.

_Master, don't be so serious. Come back and fold a frog with us. It's fun. Remember fun?_

"Fun is for people who don't run underground government organizations," she muttered as she unlocked the door to her office. "Just because you have the night off doesn't mean I do. And stop eavesdropping on my mind or you'll get nothing but B+ for a month!"

The threat of his least favorite blood type seemed to shut him up. Relieved to feel him gone from her head, she slid into her high-backed leather chair with a sigh and pulled her paperwork closer. Back to the old grind, and with any luck she'd finished it all tonight. At least it was only acquisition forms and other things that needed her signature, not anything that required a written reply, but even approving papers took time. It was tempting to simply sign her name and be done with it, but the business woman in her forced to her read through each one in the off chance that it was something unnecessary. The last time she'd okayed a form without reading it a brand new big screen TV and video game system mysteriously appeared in the men's barracks, courtesy of the Hellsing spending account. That little offense Integra took out of their paychecks. She snickered at the memory.

_Master_.

She jerked, and her fountain pen left an unsightly black blotch like a squid with a loose bladder, obscuring her name. Scowling, she hoped her irritation was audible in her mental voice. _What is it?_

_I have a joke for you._

Bloody Christ, she could only imagine how bad this would be. Alucard had a terrible sense of humor: he thought evisceration was funny, but 90% of Monty Python went right over his head. She set her pen down before she could do any more damage.

With exaggerated suspense, Alucard slowly asked, _What room does a ghoul not have in his house? _

Without even pretending to guess she replied, _I give up._

_A 'living' room!_

Her head fell forward and hit her desktop with a 'thump.' Belatedly she realized the ink was still wet.

One completed stack of paperwork (and a shower to remove the stain on her forehead) later, Integra was readying for bed. It was only midnight, earlier than her usual bedtime, and she was looking forward to the extra sleep. Yawning, she turned on her night lap, pulled down the sheets to crawl into the bed – and stopped.

Laying innocently on her pillow was a black paper rose. She smiled despite herself.

* * *

A/N: A rather sweet ending for such a brain killing fic. I am ashamed to say I came up with the ghoul joke all by myself while writing this. I'm also proud of the line, "like a squid with a loose bladder." I confuse myself sometimes...

Origami is one of the many random hobbies my dad has taken up over the years, along with archery, flint knapping, basket weaving, blues guitar, growing ornamental plants, and making things blow up. His interest in atypical pastimes have in part inspired Alucard's own ventures in 'Hobbies.' In this case, origami is something he developed an interest in as a kid when he visited Japan.

Want to make your own origami bats? Look up "How To Make an Origami Bat" by Howcast on YouTube! It's a quick and easy pattern, so you can make a bunch and hang them from the ceiling. :) Good origami paper is thin like gift wrap, but not as floppy and holds a crease well.


	4. Thursday: Ashtray

"**_Hobbies"_**

_**by Agar**_

Rating: PG for some mild language.

Summary: Alucard has picked up some strange hobbies in the past 500 years. A week long "slice of life" in the Hellsing household.

Disclaimer: Hellsing is the creation of Kouta Hirano and belongs to various publishers and producers who are not me. I am not making any money from this.

Author's Notes: This fic was inspired by an oekaki called "Alucard-The hobby knits" by meso-moq at DeviantArt. Her artwork is rough, but quite beautiful and often humorous. Please go take the time to look her up.

* * *

**Thursday – Ashtray**

Something was touching her nose.

It was late afternoon. Integra could tell by the heat of the sunlight on her back streaming through her western window. It made her warm and lethargic, though the awkward position she was in left a stiffness in her neck that would haunt her once she sat up. She'd fallen asleep at her desk, which was a common enough occurrence with her night owl tendencies, and would suffer the muscle aches because of it.

Cracking one eye open, she half expected to see Alucard dangling over her holding a feather, but her servant was nowhere to be found. Normally his absence was a relief, but it only made Integra more paranoid. Alucard's favorite pastime was visiting her study to annoy her while she worked, and this many hours uninterrupted often meant he'd found worse trouble elsewhere in the mansion - spooking the maids perhaps. Then again, it was still several hours until nightfall and he hated to be anywhere except his coffin during the day.

Fully awake now, she pushed up from her desk and groaned when her neck popped loudly. Whatever had been tickling her nose had disappeared, though more than likely she'd only dreamt it. Having slept though lunch, she decided now was as good a time as any to eat. She adjusted her crooked glasses, stood up...and immediately bumped her head on the what had awoken her in the first place.

With reflexes hones from years of military training, she snatched the culprit out of the air. It crumpled in her hand without a fight, and when she opened her palm she was confronted by a crinkled bit of black paper. A suspicion growing in her mind, she looked up to see what exactly had kept Alucard busy while she slept.

Dozens, maybe hundreds of small black shapes were frozen in midair around her. A closer look revealed they were in fact suspended from fishing line, but at first glance they gave the appearance of a black cloud. It was an impressive work of art modeled after the Japanese tradition of a Thousand Cranes, in which a thousand origami cranes are folded to grant a wish, creating the illusion of a flock in mid-flight. There was only one discrepancy: every single one was folded into a bat.

She plucked one from its line and glared at it. It looked back at her with innocent pasted on googly-eyes.

She sighed. Vampires had a terrible sense of humor.

* * *

The paper bat was tucked into her jacket's breast pocket when Alucard materialized next to her.

"What are you doing?" he asked in a bored tone while leaning over her shoulder, both to see what she was working on and to invade her personal space. The bats hanging above swung from the displaced air.

Integra's eye twitched, but she didn't rise to the bait, choosing to ignore Alucard's cold breath on her neck. "Work. Cleaning up after you. I'm still getting complaints from the Liverpool incident, mostly concerning your tendency to leave a trail of property damage."

"That's hardly my fault. If the target hadn't barricaded himself in a bank vault I wouldn't have had to shoot my way through. Luckily reinforced steel was designed to stop _humans_, not _me_." He laughed madly, pleased with his own prowess. "The look on that pathetic freak's face when he saw me claw through that door like paper!"

Unable to bear it any longer, she shoved him away. "Your ego is smothering me. There is a perfectly serviceable chair _across_ from me. Use it!"

He tossed his nose in the air like the highborn aristocrat he once was, but deigned to sit anyway. He sauntered around her desk and slumped into the chair with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. No doubt if his hands hadn't otherwise been occupied he would have crossed them over his chest like a petulant child.

She turned his own question back at him. "What are _you_ doing?"

"This?" He held up the grey lump he was fiddling with. "Pottery."

Removing her glasses, she massaged the bridge of her nose. "Of course. Why not?"

With Alucard now a proper distance away, she went back to her work. She managed to concentrate for a total of nine minutes before her curiosity got the better of her. Setting her pen down, she lit a cigar, took a long drag, and exhaled the cloud of smoke with a sigh of pleasure. She leaned back in her chair and watched her servant mold the ball of clay. The slow, repetitive motion of his hands were hypnotic as they slowly formed the clay into something vaguely cup shaped.

"What are you making?"

"Probably an ashtray."

"You're not sure?"

"It would be nice if it becomes a new goblet for my dinner, but this is proving to be more difficult than anticipated." There was a hint of aggravation in his voice, evident in the way he unintentionally lingered over his R's in a growl, and Integra stifled a grin. For all his years, Alucard was still as easily frustrated as a human and prone to impatience over the oddest things. He continued, "I refuse to have an ugly goblet, so some practice is needed, thus the ashtray. Nobody cares if those are a little lumpy on some spots."

"You don't smoke."

"But you do, Master."

She looked at the solid silver ashtray decorated with the Hellsing coat of arms sitting on her desk. It had been a gift from Sir Penwood in honor of her eighteenth birthday, though she'd started smoking at sixteen, and had sat in that spot ever since.

She took another drag off her cigar. "Put the Hellsing crest on it and I'll consider using it."

* * *

A/N: I once went to an art museum that had a bunch of origami butterflies hanging from the ceiling in one hallway. They were low enough that you had to walk through a curtain of them to get to the next room. Pretty cool. If I wasn't so lazy I'd make a bunch of bats like Alucard did for Halloween. Happy Samhain, everybody!

Sorry this chapter took longer to post than the others. I've been distracted by another fandom lately, Metalocalypse. God that show is so stupid, but so funny! And the fanfiction is slash-tastic. *drools* I'm pretty sure Toki is gay for Skiwsgaar.


End file.
